This may be a really bad question, but looking back on my marriage, I'm seeing places that WH may have cheated before. Maybe not as full blown as the time I know about but....

My question is, do people begin a first affair after 30 years of marriage or is are there usually more? Am I still being naïve to think that this was the only one. I've asked him and he says no...this was the only one, but we all know how bad his memory is.

I've explored whether he has cheated before in our M quite a bit and I don't believe he has. And this is further confirmed by the way he acted so differently when he was cheating than he ever has before. His cheating was related to his erectile dysfunction which happened right before the cheating started.

My husband swears it never happened before these two women. I went back through his emails, FB messages, and phone logs for the past several years... there's nothing. One woman messaged him a bit flirty on FB in 2010 and he just gushed an gushed about me and how happy he was with his marriage and daughter. The woman never responded.

I can trace back where changes with him started. They started about the time that he started his job with 2nd shift. He started feeling it was appropriate to have a middle-of-the-night life with several bachelors. It started as going to the gym. It started with smoking a bit of pot every now and then, which was his first major lie from me. It started escalating where they would hang out longer. Then a woman started the job and she started flirting with him. He flirted back. That was his first foray over the line. He confessed to his best friend that he worried he would stray. His best friend told him do not do it, do not, turn to me (his wife). OW1 messaged him a few days later and the rest is, I guess you can say, history.

I feel more comfortable being able to go back over the logs and records and seeing that there is no indication this happened before. I also feel comfortable getting a sense of seeing him slip away and having a second life, which pulled him away from his family life and set the stage for him to start focusing on ego-ego-ego

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - Dumbledore

Posts: 2430 | Registered: Jun 2014 | From: California

heme♀ 40684Member # 40684

Posted: 4:43 PM, July 25th (Friday), 2014

After DDay 1 my husband swore he had never done anything like that before.. After D Day 2 he admitted it had been doing it off and on our whole relationship.

It could have been the first time or it could be hes still lying and denying to cover his ass.

a little bit of a thread jack. but I wonder if there are steps toward infidelity?

I know my WW had really poor boundaries with men she worked with for years and years. I complained about this quite allot but was told I was being jealous and too controlling.

My WW admitted she flirted with men at work. *innocent flirting* she called it. an oxymoron if there ever was one IMO.

Did any of them cross the line into a EA? or a PA? I dont know. it could have easily have happened.

But I wonder if there arent a number of near misses before the bulls eye is hit and a affair starts up?

Forgive and forget = Relive and regret.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Posts: 3483 | Registered: Sep 2007

sohurtbyhim♀ 33057Member # 33057

Posted: 5:26 PM, July 25th (Friday), 2014

I can remember years ago when WH went to a stag party. I guess it was really raunchy and something he said that the groom to be did hit nerve with me and I said that if I was the bride and knew about it, I wouldn't marry him because he cheated. WH disagreed with me totally and didn't talk to me for a few days after that. WH had said that oral sex is not cheating. I asked him if I did oral on someone else would he think I was cheating and he said no. And I know he really believed that.

This is just one example of my thinking that he may have cheated (at least in my eyes) if not his before. If he did have oral with someone at that stag party or anywhere else, in his mind it wasn't cheating.

Thank you to everyone who responded. I am so sorry that you have to go through this too.

Got married in August, 1986. My WS was out of town and called a hooker in February, 1988. Couldn't even be faithful for 2 lousy years. I have wracked my brain trying to figure out what set him off on that path. He says he just panicked thinking he'd never have sex with anyone else again ever. Yeah, right. Also swears nothing happened bc he didn't have a condom. I don't believe him but he swears it's true. He says now he should of told me he got a blow job because I would have believed that? I have to admit, I probably would have. He says he was faithful from then until 2005. Now, who would believe that?

And remember Murphy is right. Nothing is so bad that it can't get worse!!!

Posts: 1631 | Registered: Jun 2013 | From: Ontario, Canada

shatteredheart12♀ 43567Member # 43567

Posted: 8:16 PM, July 25th (Friday), 2014

i have wonder and it doesn't help that we live in a small town where EVERYONE loves a bit of juicy gossip

The rumour mill was quite busy when they discovered that I found out about this A and kicked him out and he moved in with OW

Talk was he has been cheating on me for a long time, with other women. He denies it but I know he lies so I guess I will never know for sure

Posts: 70 | Registered: May 2014

plainpain♀ 40139Member # 40139

Posted: 8:28 PM, July 25th (Friday), 2014

My WH only had one affair, but there was a lot of years of sexual pre-amble to that. Porn, voyeurism, flirtations everywhere, inappropriate texting, strippers, buying flowers, a kiss, a rub-and-tug, a prostitute (didn't go through with), on-line dating and a "hook-up" for oral... it was all a lead-up to crossing over that line. My WH says his A was 20 years in the making. It was never about "her", but about what was inside him. Looking back I can definitely think of the times I knew something was "off". He wasn't having an affair per se, but definitely outside the bounds of our marital relationship and squarely in the realm of infidelity.

Me: Believer; 40s
Him: Liar; 40s
Married 19 years
1 year EA/2 month PA/incidental infidelities I can't begin to process
OC born 2014
OW:21
In successful R, but still in just plain pain.

Posts: 842 | Registered: Jul 2013

Deanna♀ 26854Member # 26854

Posted: 8:31 PM, July 25th (Friday), 2014

I don't think my husband ever cheated before. He told me he was propositioned once making a delivery to one of our customers house.
The truth of the matter is this was the perfect storm. All the stars were lined up together and he was ripe for an affair. I don't think he would look for an affair. One would have to present itself which is what happened. She threw it out there and he took the bait. No I don't think that ever happened before.

That is one of the many pieces of the puzzle of infidelity that is missing, imho. Maybe some day you will know that, but maybe not. People who lie rarely lie once.

Posts: 5651 | Registered: Jul 2002

homewrecked2011♀ 34678Member # 34678

Posted: 8:59 AM, July 26th (Saturday), 2014

I think he's benn at it for a while, but he's not that good looking, so I think his choices were limited. His current woman (the OW) wants his parent's money, so I guess she doesn't care what he looks like.

The reason I think he's done this before:

15 years ago he hurriedly wanted to move out of our rental and buy a house. We were in our new home in 2 months! He said he didn't want to pay the landlord ever again,,, that the landlord was being a jerk. Dumb me...landlord probably saw something.

15 years ago a woman told me that my H hit on her all the time. But, she had been let go, so I thought she was just mad.

10 years ago, someone told me that her H had told her my H was "sweet" on another guy's girlfriend. I blew off the comment.

5 years ago his Dad was dying and he went out of state to help his family. He called me one night and said he and his cousin were running around, hanging out,, but I distinctly heard women talking in the background... I thought it was his cousin's wife and daughters,, but now I wonder. Also he said his parents had made him pay for stuff while he was out there, so he said he had no money and needed me to WU some.

I was really stupid, or maybe it's the fact that I don't know any people like WS, so I wasn't looking for any warning flags....

Keep Calm and Happy On!

me BS 52
him - 46
married 15 years DIVORCED 10 31 12
children - ds15 ds12
d-day 12-19-11
I gave a 24hour ultimatum then went to attorney next day
Divorce filed

Posts: 2729 | Registered: Jan 2012

burnedcanuckEMS♀ 35813Member # 35813

Posted: 9:37 AM, July 26th (Saturday), 2014

Nope. In hindsight I am sure he cheated the entire time we were together. I found his Adult Friend Finder profile early on, confronted and I distinctly remember his reaction. Complete anger - yelling, screaming, frothing at the mouth (literally). He told me he was trying to make a dating profile for his dad. This was in 2002 and I didn't really know what AFF really was.... Silly me I forgave and forgot.

Then there was the time he was smoking up with his friend's wife and I walked in the room to find them standing really close looking into each others eyes. And the time I was working nights and phoned home to hear a girl's voice in the background. He said she needed to borrow the phone! Then the secretary at his work who he wanted to invite to our New Years party. This is the same girl who I caught driving our brand new truck around town one day. Another time, we were at home on one of our few nights off together (I worked shift work) and suddenly he dressed up in his nice clothes and leather jacket "to run to town"... when I got mad, same reaction as the AFF time.

When they say hind sight is 20/20 I believe it to be true. Its easy to see now but at the time he was so mentally abusive and manipulative I believed his excuses and lies. He always had a way to cover his tracks and a distraction technique to shift the focus back onto me and his perceived wrong doings I had (even though I never cheated). To top it all off he always acted extremely jealous of me and accused me of cheating all those years.

I thank God everyday for answered prayers. In my case, the answered prayer was actually catching him and being able to divorce him.

I know that in my case, once that initial DDay occurred and the scales fell from my eyes, I started to view certain things in a different light. When my FWH delivered his full confession, all those things and many more were infidelity-related. Trust your gut....if it seems "wrong" minus blind trust borne of naivete, it likely is wrong.

You can't fill a cup with no bottom.

Posts: 4037 | Registered: Feb 2008 | From: a new start together

Whalers11♀ 27544Member # 27544

Posted: 10:28 AM, July 26th (Saturday), 2014

Nope. He said this was the only time but there was definitely suspicious behavior back to day one that my naive self overlooked.

Me: BGF - 34

I gave you more than I ever got back
You left me here to forget about that
All the things you thought you had have gone
Let that be a lesson to you
-Richie Kotzen, "Special"

Posts: 2651 | Registered: Feb 2010

NeverAgain2013♀ 38121Member # 38121

Posted: 10:49 AM, July 26th (Saturday), 2014

I think cheaters will only admit to WHAT YOU KNOW.

They can claim all they want that the first 30 years they were a choir boy, but I have a very hard time believing anything out of a liar's mouth.

The only two things you can count on are death and taxes. Everything else is a guess, at best.

PS: 25 years ago I divorced the biggest cheating skirt-chaser on the planet. Do you BELIEVE I'm STILL hearing stories about his cheating from when we were married?????? Not from him of course, because he's a liar. I had dinner with a couple of longtime girlfriends a few months ago, and the one was reminiscing about how she'd caught her husband - and mine - at a work site with a couple women when she'd stopped by to bring her husband a surprise lunch. She got a surprise, alright. And she was telling this story like I already knew about it - but I didn't.

So I don't believe for one second we really and truly KNOW 100% what our cheating spouses did before we actually caught them with their hands in the cookie jar.

Be careful - that 'knight in shining armor' may very well be nothing more than an assclown wrapped in tin foil.
ME: 50+ years old and cute as a button :-)
Ex-WBF: Just a lying, cheating, gravy-sucking pig - and I left him in 2012.

Posts: 3998 | Registered: Jan 2013 | From: USA

Merida♀ 42437Member # 42437

Posted: 10:40 AM, July 27th (Sunday), 2014

I would answer that my opinion is that a Wayward has poor boundaries for awhile...

Now whether they act on that more than once depends on the situations they are presented with and their choices regarding such "opportunities" I read the BAN link about betrayal patterns and it made a lot of sense to me. So the way I'd answer is depending on how quickly a wayward can get to the point of justifying/allowing/rationalizing their behavior could explain if/how it's more than once

http://beyondaffairs.com/patterns-of-betrayal/

To me, that lack of boundaries is the basis to allow for ultimately it being easier for them to roll downhill rather than climb when it comes to working and loving in a truly committed and monogamous relationship = a marriage

My WH expressed it as feeling like an insect - hard shell but all goo inside. So when his exW "got through" his "armor" he coped by stuffing it down (since he felt his other alternative was to beat the crap out of her) and compartmentalizing. Problem was then he ultimately lost how to feel good in order to avoid feeling bad

and as he said - feeling bad (at the time) was better than feeling nothing

anyhow - really are no bad questions here = those are my thoughts

all the best

So if there is no self-love / self-value (laid down by FOO, relationship history, personal experiences etc.) than

"The Will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you."

"The darkest night is dispelled by the humblest of flames."

Posts: 477 | Registered: Feb 2014 | From: Maryland

million tears♀ 24416Member # 24416

Posted: 11:43 AM, July 27th (Sunday), 2014

My WH got oral from the stripper at his bachelor party. He then had his A 20 years later. I don't' think there was anything going on in between because he was actually nice. He was a huge asshole when he was cheating. Who knows.

H admitted to an ONS but I told him I knew he had been, if not actually cheating for a few years before he finally hooked up with OW, he'd been taking steps necessary to make it okay, in his mind, for him to cheat. His emotional distancing from me and the kids and our life, his snappish, critical attitude, especially towards me, hanging out all the time with a lying cheating snake who was married to the mother of one of our girl's friends along with all his divorced women hating buddies and all the other signs I now know are from the cheaters' handbook. All of this was his way of making it okay for him to make me the bad guy so he could something wrong, something terribly selfish and uncaring.

I don't think he cheated for the first 22 or 23 years, but the shit above started about then and by the time our 25th wedding anniversary passed, he was no longer in the marriage.

At this point, it really doesn't matter. He has to live with that....and I've had to accept that for a number of years, he was not truly married to me nor did he love or respect me enough to leave me instead of stealing over five years of my life, letting me live a lie.

Funny sometimes how questions on SI can bring out the resentment that still sits inside me. Resentment that doesn't do me any good, but it's there, like my grey hair. I can color it any way I want, but it's still grey underneath.

Ihad suspicions about a woman he nworked with when he was a buyer. I walked into to visit him one day and she was inhis office sitting just a bit to close. I knew something wasn't right. I also saw them walking together one day. Thye didn't know I was watching. They were standing shoulder to shoulder again very close. I walked up and said HELLO and both looked uncomfortable...He left the job shortly after that.
There was also a women who used to hang out in the bar where he played. She would sit very close to the stage and make googoo eyes at him. I walked in unannounced one evening and they were sitting together all chummy. I turned around and wlked out the door. Before we got married all the signs were there but I didnt listen to my gut.

The truth shall set you free or reveal the name of the OW!
ME 57
WH 64
DDAYs TOO MANY
daughter 27
You give me gifts! I don't want your gifts I want the truth. That's the greatest gift.